The American Girl IS Laura Palmer
Jul. 21st, 2024 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
armsholdairI don't see American Girl as a vessel or mask for Laura. To me, American Girl IS Laura, or whom Laura really was behind the mask played by Sheryl Lee's Laura.
To me, Twin Peaks is the dream of William "Billy" Hastings, whom is trying to escape several facts:
1. He is a murderer
2. He is the result of his mother (Judy?) having been abused by her father
3. That he was abused by his mother in turn
4. That this did not change the fact that he was hopelessly in love with her
And
5. That he killed her. By accident.
In the real world, Hastings kills women whom remind him of his mother, but whom ultimately fail in being her. They are his blue roses.
Think of the name "American Girl". This links to the song which drives Mr. C: American Woman.
His mother, being older, would have been the American Woman. Perhaps somehow connected to the Bosomy Woman, whom resembles the hair styling of Ronette?
However, in the dream world, he masks the victim under the guise of being blonde and blue-eyed (like the wife he doesn't love), but in reality they were all brunettes, like his mother.
Annie Blackburne eventually became the embodiment of this act. She was the blonde, blue eyed girl Dale recklessly rushed into a relationship with, but whom, after wearing the ring (which seemed to eventually lead the wearer to some truth), she became only a blank faced body with nothing inside but a warning meant for Dale's safety. That's all she really was afterall, what all the visages of the blue eyed victims were: masks.
Inside of Hastings "dream" the Phoebe Augustine Laura, his first intentional victim, became the Sheryl Lee Laura to help further the illusion he needed to distance himself from the truth. Just as I believe that Diane, played by the blonde blue eyed Laura Dern, is still just Naido, played by the Asian Nae Yuuki, whom is really just Billy's last victim, his secretary Betty. He killed her when he let his guard down and she saw something she shouldn't have (the monster he was and his link to Laura possibly?), as illustrated by Tracey & Sam with the box and Miriam with Richard (both women holding 2 coffee cups at some point).
This last murder, wasn't expected so it puts him at risk because it was sloppy and unplanned. Laura's murder wasn't clean either, as Carrie Page's words in the final episode indicate.
"Odessa. I tried to keep a clean house...keep everything organized...It's a long way. In those days...I was too young
to know any better."
He is afraid that what will ultimately be his last murder can tie him to his first intentional one, since murders eventually have detectives examining a person's past. We can see this in Detective Macklay having made note of Hastings' priors (which all seemed deceptively harmless) while interrogating him.
That is why we hear the mother knocking on the door of Naido's and American Girl's. Laura's mother is coming for him. This being Hastings warped mind, however, one where he hid himself as the noble Dale Cooper, he envisions his victims trying to help him. They are more or less a projection of how he saw them than a true representation, just a version of himself hiding beneath them. Just as the Bosomy Woman was played by a man.
When he sees Naido in the sherriff station though, it is an intrusion he does not want or expect. She was meant to look like Diane, the other previously unseen secretary. Seeing Naido/Betty reminds him of the truth: "We live inside of a dream."
Maddy was a similar intrusion, one where the truth tried to leak out, when the image of his victim showed up with dark hair. We can then view her role inside of the dream, and her eventual murder on a deeper level. Maddy always lamented that everyone saw her as Laura and was even eventually murdered for her resemblance. This is the real voice of Hastings victims, whom argue that they were not their killer's mother and he should never have seen them as her.
Who was his mother?
She was the fandom's other candidate for American Girl, the character she also has ties to and resembles: Audrey Horne.
We can connect American Woman to Audrey's actress, Sherilyn Fenn, directly if we remember the famous photo of Fenn wrapped in an American flag. But depending on the series only, all the clues exist there as well, but I will center on just a few.
The Experiment's birth of BOB and the little girl's invasion by the frogmoth are all echoed in Audrey getting impregnated by Mr. C while she was comatose and hospitalized, following an explosion at the bank. Several echoes are seen between the events that become unnerving: money, water, sleep, explosions, impregnation.
That the bomb happened at a bank leads us to Audrey's possible double inside of Hastings' dream world: Teresa Banks.
BOB's first victim.
While Yuuki worked with Dern on Inland Empire, and both Ronette's actress, Phoebe Augustine, and Sheryl Lee were up for Laura, Teresa's actress Pamela Gidley worked alongside Sherilyn Fenn in a film called Thrashin'. Lynch was insistent that he wanted Gidley. Banks is called a "little girl" just like Audrey and while Audrey was the Queen of Diamonds, Teresa worked out of the Red Diamond Motel. We also have that Banks, just like Audrey and the Bosomy Woman, are motel/hotel girls.
Think of what takes Dale to "Judy Land" the act of having sex, the woman in control and on top, inside of a motel room.
He wakes up the next day as a Richard.
The same name as his son with Audrey.
This all happens to the song "Mr Prayer" and Audrey was the one whom we saw praying to Dale, with a song entitled "Audrey's Prayer" playing throughout, in the 2nd season.
I think though that, just as Irene oddly states about Teresa's death, Hastings' mother's murder was an accident. Potentially fire related, and echoed in the Mitchum Bros being cleared of any wrong doing in their own hotel burning down.
But Hastings couldn't deal with this fact, along with his conception, his mother's abuse, both at the hands of her/his father and her abuse of him, and his feelings of love for her.
He let it destroy him in the act of his willingly destroying others, whereas he could have healed them as his alter ego does in Twin Peaks, the world he created to save his mother and him from their trauma by projecting it onto another family.
There is an overwhelming thread of mothers and sons coursing through The Return. In one we see Richard's murder of a boy whom obviously loved the mother whom loved him back, but failed to be careful in crossing the street. In the other we see a boy, whom is neglected by his mother, but survives when he looks both ways to cross the street, only to become hypnotized by fire.
The good and loved boy dies.
The abused boy revelling in other's deaths survives.
One last clue in the whole roles of both American Girl/Laura and Naido/Betty in regards to Audrey Horne can be found in the fact that after Laura's death a monkey is seen shaded blue like her corpse and it whispers the name Judy.
Naido, too, is heard making monkey like sounds.
This goes back to an overlooked line from the original series. In it's penultimate episode, Ben Horne came across his daughter sitting before a fire (in her red dress) and exclaimed: "Audrey. The most intelligent face that I've seen all day. You make the rest of us look like primates."
That is how the killer views his victims. They could not live up to his mother's memory and so they became nothing more than monkeys.
He may even view himself with this harsh, unforgiving judgement.
This also explains why there is an Experiment and an Experiment Model: a model is a replication, in less grander scale, of a specific monument etc.... of importance. The Experiment was his mother, all of the rest are models, but never the real deal.
This all better explains why a case can be made for many woman being the elusive Judy (Experiment, Naido, Laura) and not just one.
Hastings has a hard time differentiating the women he is attracted to.
Or, perhaps, as stated by Gacono & Meloy in their "The Relationship Between Cognitive Style - and Defensive Process in the Psychopath":
"At the same time the psychopath projects internal persecutory, malevolent introjects, possibly representations of his actual parent of abuse, onto the victim. The victim is thus devalued, transformed into a "monster" through projective identification, and is now perceived as a threat."
That is just as likely in light of the monstrous Judy.
To me, Twin Peaks is the dream of William "Billy" Hastings, whom is trying to escape several facts:
1. He is a murderer
2. He is the result of his mother (Judy?) having been abused by her father
3. That he was abused by his mother in turn
4. That this did not change the fact that he was hopelessly in love with her
And
5. That he killed her. By accident.
In the real world, Hastings kills women whom remind him of his mother, but whom ultimately fail in being her. They are his blue roses.
Think of the name "American Girl". This links to the song which drives Mr. C: American Woman.
His mother, being older, would have been the American Woman. Perhaps somehow connected to the Bosomy Woman, whom resembles the hair styling of Ronette?
However, in the dream world, he masks the victim under the guise of being blonde and blue-eyed (like the wife he doesn't love), but in reality they were all brunettes, like his mother.
Annie Blackburne eventually became the embodiment of this act. She was the blonde, blue eyed girl Dale recklessly rushed into a relationship with, but whom, after wearing the ring (which seemed to eventually lead the wearer to some truth), she became only a blank faced body with nothing inside but a warning meant for Dale's safety. That's all she really was afterall, what all the visages of the blue eyed victims were: masks.
Inside of Hastings "dream" the Phoebe Augustine Laura, his first intentional victim, became the Sheryl Lee Laura to help further the illusion he needed to distance himself from the truth. Just as I believe that Diane, played by the blonde blue eyed Laura Dern, is still just Naido, played by the Asian Nae Yuuki, whom is really just Billy's last victim, his secretary Betty. He killed her when he let his guard down and she saw something she shouldn't have (the monster he was and his link to Laura possibly?), as illustrated by Tracey & Sam with the box and Miriam with Richard (both women holding 2 coffee cups at some point).
This last murder, wasn't expected so it puts him at risk because it was sloppy and unplanned. Laura's murder wasn't clean either, as Carrie Page's words in the final episode indicate.
"Odessa. I tried to keep a clean house...keep everything organized...It's a long way. In those days...I was too young
to know any better."
He is afraid that what will ultimately be his last murder can tie him to his first intentional one, since murders eventually have detectives examining a person's past. We can see this in Detective Macklay having made note of Hastings' priors (which all seemed deceptively harmless) while interrogating him.
That is why we hear the mother knocking on the door of Naido's and American Girl's. Laura's mother is coming for him. This being Hastings warped mind, however, one where he hid himself as the noble Dale Cooper, he envisions his victims trying to help him. They are more or less a projection of how he saw them than a true representation, just a version of himself hiding beneath them. Just as the Bosomy Woman was played by a man.
When he sees Naido in the sherriff station though, it is an intrusion he does not want or expect. She was meant to look like Diane, the other previously unseen secretary. Seeing Naido/Betty reminds him of the truth: "We live inside of a dream."
Maddy was a similar intrusion, one where the truth tried to leak out, when the image of his victim showed up with dark hair. We can then view her role inside of the dream, and her eventual murder on a deeper level. Maddy always lamented that everyone saw her as Laura and was even eventually murdered for her resemblance. This is the real voice of Hastings victims, whom argue that they were not their killer's mother and he should never have seen them as her.
Who was his mother?
She was the fandom's other candidate for American Girl, the character she also has ties to and resembles: Audrey Horne.
We can connect American Woman to Audrey's actress, Sherilyn Fenn, directly if we remember the famous photo of Fenn wrapped in an American flag. But depending on the series only, all the clues exist there as well, but I will center on just a few.
The Experiment's birth of BOB and the little girl's invasion by the frogmoth are all echoed in Audrey getting impregnated by Mr. C while she was comatose and hospitalized, following an explosion at the bank. Several echoes are seen between the events that become unnerving: money, water, sleep, explosions, impregnation.
That the bomb happened at a bank leads us to Audrey's possible double inside of Hastings' dream world: Teresa Banks.
BOB's first victim.
While Yuuki worked with Dern on Inland Empire, and both Ronette's actress, Phoebe Augustine, and Sheryl Lee were up for Laura, Teresa's actress Pamela Gidley worked alongside Sherilyn Fenn in a film called Thrashin'. Lynch was insistent that he wanted Gidley. Banks is called a "little girl" just like Audrey and while Audrey was the Queen of Diamonds, Teresa worked out of the Red Diamond Motel. We also have that Banks, just like Audrey and the Bosomy Woman, are motel/hotel girls.
Think of what takes Dale to "Judy Land" the act of having sex, the woman in control and on top, inside of a motel room.
He wakes up the next day as a Richard.
The same name as his son with Audrey.
This all happens to the song "Mr Prayer" and Audrey was the one whom we saw praying to Dale, with a song entitled "Audrey's Prayer" playing throughout, in the 2nd season.
I think though that, just as Irene oddly states about Teresa's death, Hastings' mother's murder was an accident. Potentially fire related, and echoed in the Mitchum Bros being cleared of any wrong doing in their own hotel burning down.
But Hastings couldn't deal with this fact, along with his conception, his mother's abuse, both at the hands of her/his father and her abuse of him, and his feelings of love for her.
He let it destroy him in the act of his willingly destroying others, whereas he could have healed them as his alter ego does in Twin Peaks, the world he created to save his mother and him from their trauma by projecting it onto another family.
There is an overwhelming thread of mothers and sons coursing through The Return. In one we see Richard's murder of a boy whom obviously loved the mother whom loved him back, but failed to be careful in crossing the street. In the other we see a boy, whom is neglected by his mother, but survives when he looks both ways to cross the street, only to become hypnotized by fire.
The good and loved boy dies.
The abused boy revelling in other's deaths survives.
One last clue in the whole roles of both American Girl/Laura and Naido/Betty in regards to Audrey Horne can be found in the fact that after Laura's death a monkey is seen shaded blue like her corpse and it whispers the name Judy.
Naido, too, is heard making monkey like sounds.
This goes back to an overlooked line from the original series. In it's penultimate episode, Ben Horne came across his daughter sitting before a fire (in her red dress) and exclaimed: "Audrey. The most intelligent face that I've seen all day. You make the rest of us look like primates."
That is how the killer views his victims. They could not live up to his mother's memory and so they became nothing more than monkeys.
He may even view himself with this harsh, unforgiving judgement.
This also explains why there is an Experiment and an Experiment Model: a model is a replication, in less grander scale, of a specific monument etc.... of importance. The Experiment was his mother, all of the rest are models, but never the real deal.
This all better explains why a case can be made for many woman being the elusive Judy (Experiment, Naido, Laura) and not just one.
Hastings has a hard time differentiating the women he is attracted to.
Or, perhaps, as stated by Gacono & Meloy in their "The Relationship Between Cognitive Style - and Defensive Process in the Psychopath":
"At the same time the psychopath projects internal persecutory, malevolent introjects, possibly representations of his actual parent of abuse, onto the victim. The victim is thus devalued, transformed into a "monster" through projective identification, and is now perceived as a threat."
That is just as likely in light of the monstrous Judy.
